Chapter 34
THIRTY-FOUR
A cold wave of nausea rolled through me as I plunged into the trees. I couldn’t tell if it was Anna’s voice—thin and needling in my skull—or just nerves, but it hit like vertigo.
Branches lashed at my arms. The only light was a sickly, pale glow filtering through a canopy so dense it smothered the world. I should have felt at home here, raised as I was beneath green shadow, but now the trees seemed to crowd closer, strangling, pressing in on every side.
“Turn right!” Anna’s voice shrieked, sudden and electric inside my head. My vision blurred. My right ear buzzed like it was being stung from inside. I winced, bile crawling up my throat. Her voice wasn’t just a sound—it was like a violation, scraping something raw.
I lurched right, stumbling into a clearing littered with squat, white mushrooms. They gleamed eerily in the half-light, and for a moment I thought I saw them pulse, breathing with the earth. My chest tightened. What are we doing here? What are we hunting? Are we prey?
“Focus!” Anna snapped, each syllable drilling into my skull.
“I am focusing,” I rasped, but my own voice sounded thin and strange. My body wasn’t moving right. My thoughts stuttered. I waited for direction like an animal for the next shock.
I stepped forward—and the ground vanished beneath me.
Falling—slamming into a pit so abruptly it stole the breath from my lungs. Mud caked my hands, the air thick and grave-cold. Panic surged at the memory of the last time I was trapped in the dark. My mind reeled, half-expecting claws or teeth in the blackness.
“We hit a trap!” Anna screeched. Her voice seemed to split my skull, so loud I whimpered, clutching my head, wanting to claw the sound out of my brain.
Above, a shower of light particles spiraled down—beautiful, almost, until I realized they were sealing the pit, forming a roof of cold radiance, cutting me off from the world.
The pain came suddenly. White-hot, lancing through my head like a spike. It was so intense, so merciless, that I curled in the mud, gagging, tears streaming down my face. It was the kind of agony that erases the world, that makes you forget language, forget who you are.
“What. Is. Happening?” The words burst from me, not even words—just animal noise.
“You need to listen to me, Tani,” Anna crooned, her voice sticky and monstrous in my ear. “Listen, and you’ll acclimate. Listen, and you’ll survive.”
I screamed inside. I can’t. I can’t. Let me out. LET ME OUT.
“Dig a hole,” Anna said. And I did. My fingers tore at the earth, nails splitting, flesh scraping against roots and stone, blood streaking down my arms. I dug because there was nothing else. Anna wanted obedience, and the pain demanded it.
When I finally stopped, my hands were wrecked, shaking uncontrollably. “I’m done,” I sobbed, voice hollow. “Please—get me out.”
“Good. Now strip. Use your clothes for a rope.”
My mind rebelled, but my body moved, numb and mechanical. I peeled off my layers, baring myself to the mud and the cold. The shame barely registered, only a dull awareness that my skin was cut, bruised, raw. My trembling hands knotted my shirt to my pants, to everything I had left.
“Throw it over the root. Climb.”
It took three tries. Each time, Anna’s voice drilled at me—“Faster, Tani. Or you’ll be stuck here forever.”
I finally caught the root, hauling myself out, the rope biting into my palms and scraping skin off my knees and chest as I dragged myself from the grave.
“Get dressed. Hurry.”
I fumbled for my clothes, barely registering the distant, ragged cries of other trainees somewhere in the woods. But another jolt of pain knifed through me and I staggered, almost falling again.
“We got over the first hurdle,” Anna purred. “Now move. Left.”
Branches slapped me. I could feel the welts rising, the blood warm and sticky down my arms. I didn’t even know where I was anymore. Anna’s commands were all that filled my head.
“Move faster!”
I stumbled, vision tunneling, half-blind, each breath shallow and frantic. The forest wasn’t a forest anymore—it was a cage, alive and hating me.
“Faster!” Anna barked.
Something snapped. I stumbled, crashed to my knees, hands sinking into muck. My body wouldn’t obey. My mind frayed at the edges. This wasn’t a drill. This wasn’t training. It was punishment—ritual—some dark initiation, and I had no idea if I would make it out.
Just as I thought I’d break—
A man’s voice boomed overhead, sudden and inhuman:
“CEASE ACTIVITY. TRAINING IS SUSPENDED.”
The command cut through everything—Anna’s voice, the pain, even the buzzing in my ears. For a moment I didn’t believe it. I waited for Anna to contradict him, to order me onward, but the world was silent except for my own ragged breathing.
I crouched there, shaking, still waiting for Anna’s next command, too terrified to move until she finally spoke, voice flat and cold: “There’s been a… technical issue. We’ll have to resume at a later time.”
I forced myself upright and pushed through the trees, every step a blur of pain, nausea, and dread. Anna’s voice was gone, but the ache in my head lingered, a phantom scream under my skin.
I broke into sunlight and collapsed, shivering on the edge of the woods. A hand gripped my right ear, ripping out the device. I gasped at the white-hot flare of pain. Blood smeared my palm.
Anna didn’t even look at me, just turned away, her silhouette already fading.
Jessie crashed through the brush, arms bloodied and wild, and folded me into a shaking hug. Her voice was just a breath, terrified: “What was that?”
I pressed my face to her shoulder, unable to speak. Anna’s voice rang out, but I barely heard it. I was still trying to understand how this was only the beginning.